Talk:Evolution of societies
Shortened the first paragraph:
A society is a group of individuals belonging to the same species, and it doesn´t care for the happiness of the individuum but for the reproduction of common information (which is genes and culture). During the history of mankind, societies have been struggling against each other, using weapons, economic power and ideology, and have often influenced each other or merged. See social_dynamics.
For example the American societies cares to set the guidelines that an individual may persue it's happiness.
It would be nice to have some more information about the easter island case.
And before having an article on Evolution of societies which is not an easy topic we should have some definition(s) of society first.
--HJH
In revising the article I deleted much of the previous version, because I found it unhelpful and poorly written. I know others may disagree and want to reincorporate parts of it back into the article, so here it is (SR):
- During the history of mankind, societies have been struggling against each other, using weapons, economic power and ideology, and have often influenced each other or merged. See social_dynamics.
- Societies have been developed by life, further enlarging information and stability, but after a while a society can turn against its origin: For a society can´t reproduct itself, it has no other option than to strive to live on for forever. In the end it could push the envelope until 5 past 12, still waiting for the wonder to come which would prevent its death and teleport it out of the dead end. Such catastrophes have often occured, see Hitler´s "total war", or the ancient societies of Malta, Kreta and the easter islands.
I see the mistakes I made, but I would like to see you correcting them rather than just cutting it all. You have cut out all content, it is absolutly dead now.
There might be persons who would enhance my texts, but they won´t find them likely buried in /talk. I think you miss the right balance - this encyclopedia is in progress, and mistakes are made all the time anywhere. Your rigidness kills it.
- Sorry, the previous article was DOA. I couldn't "correct" them because I simply do not understand what the previous version was trying to say. "Societies have been struggling against each other?" Well, yes, many societies are often at war or in competition with other socieites, but this begs the question of what a social system is; also, societies have many ways of relating to one another. Also, I do not see how this process accounts for the evolution of societies. Do societies "enlarge their information and stability?" Maybe, in some sense, but what that sense is is highly variable, and it cetrtainly is not a "law" of societies or a trend. "After a while a societiy can turn against its origin" suggests a linear model of social development that was rejected as both bad science and dangerous Western myth by the 1920s.
- Do you want to just vent your personal opinions about life? Join a list-serve. But if you want to contribute to an encyclopedia, an article has to be about something outside of yourself, something that you have researched. I am not being rigid, I am expressing what I believe are reasonable and still very flexible standards of Wikipedia.
- The revised article at least educates readers about important discussions that serious and informed people have been having. I am sure that my revision has left out a lot, and I hope you will add to it. But I simply could not see anything in the earlier version that said anything clear or meaningful to include in the article. SR
I didn't see anything here about societies deliberately started by individuals or pioneering groups. The premise seems to be that societies simply coalesce out of chaos. I'd like to see some other theories. Ed Poor
obviously this is still going to need work, including edition for style. I made two changes for now.
First, I got rid of "most intelligent" since there is a danger of ethnocentric or even species-centric notions of intelligence. I also got rid of the phrase "in the wild" for hominidae, since the very notion of "wild" is probelmatic when talking about genus Homo, it reflects tha nature/culture myth of the European enlightenment which is not scientific, SR
Try "cognitive" for under-four-year-old children and Great Apes, "sentient" for anything with a theory of mind, and avoid "intelligent" if you can at all.
Considering the turgid history of this page, the importance of Marx's theory to history, and the constant censorship of material about ecoregional democracy or alternative lifestyles, I consider my approach to this topic to be well-balanced. I'm glad we're talking about it.
It's very tough to address the various types of evolution, how individual and social evolution differ - the page when I found it failed to describe what anyone did about this before or after Spencer.
The idea of evolution of societies is not going away. Nor is the controversy. We gain more from a thoughtful hack at the stuff than we do from bouncing it.
I appreciate giving this the attention it deserves.
About "wild" humans - the term 'feral' is scientifically defined, but more important, it refers to a "natural point of view" as opposed to a "neutral point of view", that being defined primarily by one's body and surrounding ecology. I tried to add this to the NPOV article but someone without a body who is not breathing air may have removed it for not being 'neutral'. ;-)
I did some backup definition work on Gaians and Greens which may be helpful - and worked it in with the postmodernists and critical theorists to make a nice ironic paragraph. I also differentiated Gaia Hypothesis (which already had a good entry) from Gaia Theory (which didn't), and the environmental and conservation movements which is always controversial when you try to split them off from ecology or peace. Whatever. Had to be done.
This article now reads quite well, and structurally starts to make some sense.
Removed
- instead listening to political ecologists - Greens or Gaians.
The troublem is that political ecologists is defined on its link to be Gaians. So you have Gaians listening to Gaians.
Removed
- While there is little consensus on desirable evolution of societies, there is remarkably little dispute on what is undesirable: crowding, conflict, dogma, war, disregard for the arts and a stifling of spiritual life. Fictional Dystopias may thus be the best guide to social evolution, e.g. continental trading blocs as forseen by George Orwell.
This just isn't true. There are a number of ideologies which view crowding, conflict, dogma, war, disregard for the arts, and a stifling of spiritual life as desirable.
I'm trying to rework the article in a chronological basis starting with pre-industrial society. Going to Rosseau, Darwin, Marx, and Spencer --- Don't worry, my edits preserved yours. I left all your text and put everything snipped out into serious rewrite into hopefully useful form.
I get your objection about the un/desirability - I toned it down. But the point of that paragraph is that Fictional Dystopias are probably more reliable than science as a why to mark out "what we don't want" - they've had a huge influence on the Western World where "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is more read than the Bible. The fact that we got continental trading blocs and military alliances *anyway* probably means they're inevitable. And certainly we see dictionary hacking all the time. ;-)
Your objection applied perfectly to the new tribalists but poorly to an Ecoregional Democracy, so I split the two out to differentiate somewhat - ED or Bioregional Democracy has nothing really to do with tribalism as such...
I agree with a chronological focus but also with differentiating indigenous, Chinese and Judeo-Christian views. Islam also plays a huge role in this - there's explicit support for evolution of society's social rules in Islam (the ijtihaad) at least until the Ottomans.
Another thing which I realized updating this is that the Greens, Gaians and scientific ecologists take three starkly different views on this subject...!
Gaians are like Marxists and see an evolution to stricter cooperation and deep integration. Ecologists want empirical evidence to build the entire explanation from the bottom up - how ecology guides and constrains behavior, conditions us, etc.. Greens are cognitive and democratic and wish these various visions and ideologies to be forced to work together to consensus.
In fact, that may well be the best way to differentiate the three views...